Leveraging Cloud and Big Data for Social Media Sales and Support

The new ITC Express solution offers banks the chance to respond to customer complaints and inquiries in social media through a cloud-based platform that utilizes text mining.

In the Chat Communications Inc, a company that specializes in social media solutions for sales and customer insights, launched ITC Express, a cloud-based online platform to help companies communicate with their customers via social media. The ITC Express platform, released yesterday, uses advanced text analytics and a contact center platform to help facilitate sales and support for customers in real-time through social media.

For $350 a month per brand, institutions using the solution can delve deeper into social media beyond simply posting on their own sites or profile pages, John Huehn, In the Chat’s CEO and founder, says. “About 30% of the relevant mentions of a specific brand occur on their profiles, and the other 70% is out there in the ether,” Huehn notes.

Using the same text mining capabilities as In the Chat’s enterprise solution, ITC Express pools mentions in social media and uses analytics to determine which mentions are relevant and can be addressed by the bank. Those mentions are then categorized to make them actionable, Huehn explains, and staff can respond to those mentions and start a conversation with them that can be moved to a representative in the call center.

ITC Express right now is only hooked into Twitter, but Huehn says that other social media platforms will be added over time. Twitter is the most valuable social media site from a customer service perspective because it is the site that consumers most often use to complain about a bad experience with a brand, Huehn adds.

In the Chat also helps clients shape their responses to such complaints on Twitter. The company has a model for replying to mentions on Twitter that Huehn reports has achieved as high as a 60% response rate.

The solution also has reporting for social media interactions with customers that can help facilitate compliance in the social media channel -- a growing concern for banks given FINRA’s recent compliance spot checks. Conversations with customers are each compiled into a separate case and stored in In the Chat’s database, where it can later be referenced to help track compliance.

Jonathan Camhi has been an associate editor with Bank Systems & Technology since 2012. He previously worked as a freelance journalist in New York City covering politics, health and immigration, and has a master's degree from the City University of New York's Graduate School ... View Full Bio

You make a good point Debbie, but the issue with handling complaints made on Facebook is the privacy settings that Facebook enables. If people make their profiles private then the bank won't be able to see the complaint.

This is a useful tool and obviously needs more than Twitter. Negative comments show up on Facebook all the time and people have more "room" to elaborate. Hopefully, other social media networks will be added soon. I also hope that proper training is done so that negative comments are addressed in the appropriate manner and that banks teach their staff how to engage with their customers.

This tool sounds like it makes managing mentions from customers -- whether good or bad -- more manageable. It must be easier to prioritize without having to set up a hashtag or keyword alert in Twitter that alerts you to mentions of your institution, and then sorting through to determine which mentions warrant a response. That In the Chat has found a way to prioritize is innovative.